


Lost In Our Void

by gaialux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Hallucination Lucifer (Supernatural) | Hallucifer, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24746968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/pseuds/gaialux
Summary: After jumping into the pit, Sam wakes up to a new world. One where he and Dean are together and nothing past the ganking that Woman in White back in 2005 has happened. At least that's what Sam thinks until the walls slowly come crumbling down...
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60
Collections: Supernatural and J2 Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so much to my artist paperbackwriter. Please check out the amazing work [HERE](https://paperbackwriter.livejournal.com/305081.html). Props to my beta Sara -- all remaining mistakes are my own. This fic contains non-con (Sam/Lucifer) and dub-con (Sam/Lucifer!Dean) as well as self-harm and suicidal ideation. Please be warned.

_And the walls kept tumbling down  
_ _In the city that we love  
_ _Grey clouds roll over the hills  
_ _Bringing darkness from above  
_ — Pompeii by Bastille

**PART ONE**

_I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for you to love me.  
_ — from Crush by Richard Siken

Sam wakes. 

The world around him is burning; a blistering heat from behind closed eyelids. He forces his eyes open and the sensation is suddenly gone. Replaced by cool, smooth leather beneath his hands and a crisp breeze pouring through the cracked window.

He’s in the impala and there are no flames.

Sam sits up, stretches his arms and touches the smooth glass of the window. Outside nothing is burning. Instead, white fluffy clouds dance in the sky which seems an almost impossibly perfect blue.

It’s beautiful and, for some unknown reason, Sam feels the need to drive. The keys are in the ignition. He turns them and the engine rumbles to life with her familiar purr. 

As he goes along, the scenery changes yet remains familiar. The rolling hills of Colorado, the long and meandering Mississippi River, the stretching dessert of Arizona. Sam doesn’t know how he manages to see all of this in a single drive, but he soaks it in.

Maybe God took pity on him. Maybe he’s on his way to heaven.

Soon, the road stretches out into sleek, black asphalt and the scenery blurs. Sam presses down on the gas, flying along the freeway as wind whips through his hair. It smells clean, clear, fresh; not like the stale demon blood that had stung his nostrils prior.

Sam knows where he’s going. 

Somehow. Like an invisible winch pulling the car along. He’s calm. At peace.

Sam knows he’s on his way to see Dean.

*

The impala begins to slow. The world doesn’t look all that different, but suddenly Sam sees a turn. It’s a parking lot of a grand hotel, so many stories high Sam can’t even see the penthouse. It has no sign bearing its name, only a huge water feature spurting foamy liquid from the mouth of a life-sized whale. 

Sam blinks and it becomes a motel— or was it always one? It’s small with battered doors and graffiti coated brickwork. Sam doesn’t recognize it, but it feels a little bit like home. 

He stops the car outside the decrepit reception. Through the dusty window he can see a man with a cigarette behind his ear and a baseball cap pulled down low. He’s reading a newspaper while a grainy TV flickers a kaleidoscope of colours over his face. But Sam doesn’t go there and ask for a room, instead he locks up the impala and goes to the door with a rusted number 10 stuck to the centre. 

The doorknob turns easily and he pushes it open, blinking at the darkness and waiting for his eyes to adjust.

“About time, Sammy. Did they give you extra onions this time?”

It’s Dean. He’s sitting on the bed, one leg dangling over and a book — Dad’s journal? — laid out in front of him. His face is smooth, white, with no spatters of blood or bursts of purple bruises. Sam can’t find his voice and his throat clogs.

All he can do is walk over and wrap his arms around Dean’s shoulders. This has to be heaven. God took pity on him.

“No onions, huh?” Dean asks, his voice rich and gravelly. He looks up at Sam with a soft, perfect smile and Sam is so, so happy. When Dean caresses Sam’s face, just for a moment, Sam doesn’t know what to think. “Don’t worry — we’ll have dinner somewhere else on the road.”

“Where are we going?” Sam asks.

Dean looks at him like he’s grown an additional head. “California,” he says slowly. “Law school interview, remember? You said you’d kill me if we missed it.”

When Sam looks up from Dean’s face, the room looks...different. Red carpet and papers — photocopies, newspapers, ripped prints — paint the walls. Even the bed covers have changed color.

Sam remembers this. How didn’t he recognize it before? They’re in Jericho. 

“Get moving,” Dean says, patting Sam’s knee and standing from the bed. “We’re burning daylight.”

Sam feels numb as he reaches for his duffel bag — did he bring it in with him? — and begins to rolls his clothes and place them inside. Dean is packed before him and comes over, squeezes Sam’s arm, and Sam looks at his brother. _Really_ looks at him. At the lack of lines, the lack of scars, and softness of his features. 

This has to be heaven. This has to be memories. And maybe, for the first time in so many years, Sam is willing to admit to himself that this _was_ a good memory. One of his best. To have his brother come to Stanford, pick him up, and drive off into a world that was always etched into both of their bones.

What _isn’t_ the good memory is what comes next. Back when they’re in California. A memory Sam has never forgotten; it still wakes him at night. 

“Come on, Sam,” Dean says, releasing his touch and heading towards the door. “I’ll get baby started.”

*

They’re on a normal, if almost rural, highway. Dean has a mix tape cranked up and blaring — AC/DC fading into Zeppelin fading into Metallica. It settles into Sam’s body and he feels like he can relax. He can tune out the world and give into these memories.

He’s done enough.

But there’s still the itching of what’s to come. Of Stanford and fire and blood and the whirlwind of everything. Bittersweet, do they have that in heaven? Or is he allowed to skip over it like a scratched to hell CD?

“How’s Jess?” he finds himself asking. 

Dean turns down the volume and glances over at Sam. “Who?”

“Jess...” Sam says slowly. “Jessica?”

“We just killed Constance,” Dean says. Then he shrugs. “Well, _re_ killed her at least.”

Sam says nothing. Maybe in order to make this work as heaven he has to erase Jess from his memories. That’s okay. It means she’s safe.

Dean turns the music back up and Sam finds himself wondering why he’s so blasé about taking Sam back to Stanford. He remembers the fight, that look of sheer _pleading_ on his entire face. But in this reality Dean starts singing along as the tape clicks over to _Ramble On._

They pass more scenes of paddocks and houses, speeding past a world Sam both does and doesn’t recognize. 

Sam hates to admit it — especially because Heaven is meant to be perfect and hold only _good_ memories — but he wants the part where Dean asks him to stay. That confusion swirling in his stomach when Dean had begged him to come hunting, to find Dad, but also his willingness to let Sam go and live a normal life. 

Back then he wanted Dean to make the choice for him, like he did so many times when they were kids.

The car trip seems so much faster than it was. Sam catches sight of a sign welcoming them into Palo Alto and the houses change from far and few between to suburban lots sandwiched close together. He recognizes this, but in that foggy way of old memories. It’s an old life. Held by an old Sam.

It’s not long before Dean stops the car outside a clapboard, almost-cottage-style house. He kills the engine, the music dying out along with it, and they’re hit with the sounds of birds and distant childish squeals. 

“What are we doing here?” Sam asks, because even through the fog he _knows_ this isn’t the place he and Jess shared. Or even him and Brady after Sam’s first year on campus.

Dean looks at Sam like he’s gained an additional head. “We’re home, Sam.” 

Nothing in Sam’s brain registers as they leave the car and walk up a concrete path. Each side is lined sporadically with succulents wedged into thick pebbles and rocks. Dean takes his keys — the ones usually only holding the Impala and weapon chest — and turns the lock on the stained oak front door. When did Dean ever live here? Why can’t Sam remember?

From the open door, Sam takes in a short hall with doors open on either side and a staircase at the end. The walls are a soft blue, the carpet an off-white cream. Dean stops outside the first door and gestures to Sam.

It takes a few seconds for Sam’s feet to step over the threshold and make their way to where Dean’s standing. He looks into the room, a little study nook reminiscent of the one he had in his dorm room years ago, but there’s an updated laptop on the desk and an iPod dock nearby. 

“You get studying — I’ll start dinner.”

Sam does as he’s told. 

*

Dean serves them meatloaf, heavy on the spice and with his own gravy-ketchup concoction that tastes amazing. Sam had no idea Dean could cook this well — his attempts at Winchester Surprise had always been a failure, and Spaghetti-Os didn’t really count as cooking — but Sam finishes his plate and goes back for seconds. Dean looks as pleased as peach pie.

“Decided you finally like my cooking?” Dean asks, clearing the table. “What was it you said last week? That ‘Fritos could sustain me until exams were over’? Real nice, Sam.”

“Did I?” How long had Dean been staying here with him? Was this his brain’s way of piecing together that weekend Dean came to Stanford before Dad went missing? The first time he begged Sam to come back to him, to try remote classes, that he could study but he _needs_ to stay with the family.

He’d told Dean to fuck off and it was two more years before they spoke again. 

Was Sam going to have to say that to keep the memories rolling? Does he even need to go further than this one?

Sam takes his plate to the sink and hands it to Dean who has started the faucet running.

“I should really get you to do this,” Dean says. “Isn’t there some rule about cooking and not washing up?”

“I can do it,” Sam says. Almost robotically. He’s still staring at Dean and trying to figure out when and where they are — what he has to do to keep this going. Did he even die? Could this be a djinn fever dream? Sam can’t remember dying, but then again he also never did all those times before.

He takes the plate from Dean’s hand and sets to work cleaning dishes. The water is hot, almost burning, but Sam relishes in it. Everything feels so real _._ So alive. 

He shuts off the tap and starts scrubbing. Outside the sun is beginning to set, a soft glow on the horizon. As he watches it grows brighter, almost burning. Red flames rising up over the houses and drowning out the sun. 

Arms wrap around Sam’s waist and he drops the plate he’s holding into the sudsy water. He whips his head around to see Dean with a smile on his face as he drops his lips to Sam’s neck.

The images flash through his mind hard and fast. 

He’s in what looks like a cabin — both of them are. Timber slat walls and a roaring fireplace. Something is playing on the TV but that isn’t what Sam’s focused on.

Sprawled out on a patchwork quilt thrown over an old and beaten sofa is Dean. He’s young — the age 20 springing to Sam’s mind like intuition — and shirtless. Light from the fire flickering on his chest and across his eyes. Sam smiles and Dean smiles back, holding out a hand which draws Sam over. _Dad’s on a hunt_. Sam isn’t sure if they’re Dean’s words or his own thoughts. But Sam knows it’s important.

Dean pulls him down onto the sofa and cups Sam’s face, bringing their lips together. It’s a crash of lights and color and Sam audibly gasps.

“I’m sorry I made you wait so long,” Dean murmurs against Sam’s lips. He runs his hand through Sam’s hair and Sam leans into it, sighing loudly. He knows he shouldn’t be feeling like this, but he can’t help it. Everything feels so right and _real_. This is a memory, somehow, and Sam lets it sweep him away.

Then he’s back in reality — or at least this version of the present. Dean’s lips are chasing a trail down to his collarbone.

“Changed my mind,” he murmurs. The same tone from the memory. “I’ll get up early tomorrow to wash.”

Sam lets himself be turned and shoved against the sink, Dean finding his lips and kissing hard. Sam kisses back, falling into Dean's touch. Do they do this? They must do this. The memories seem so real and the actions flow. Dean’s hips are pressed perfectly between Sam’s and their mouths in sync. 

It’s only when Dean’s hand reaches between them and slips down Sam’s jeans does he pull away. A look crosses over Dean’s face and, if Sam didn’t know any better, he’d almost say it was anger. Instead he pins it down to frustration. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. 

Dean’s face turns up into a soft smile. “I guess that’s what happens when you’re practically married, huh?”

_Married?_

It’s almost as if Dean read Sam’s thoughts as he continues, “Living together is practically married, right? Especially when you tried to make me trade in hunting for a 9 to 5.”

“But you...didn’t?” Sam hopes it doesn’t sound too much like a question.

“Compromise, Sammy. You can have your fancy dancy law degree and I’ll drag you out for some hunts around the state from time to time.”

Somehow, all of this sounds familiar to Sam. Like it’s a conversation they’ve had over and over again. He can even remember the arguments — not of him leaving Dad and Dean for Stanford or him telling Dean to leave after his visit. No, these are arguments that end in hungry mouths and desperate whispers. The type of arguments Sam always wished for, in a fucked up kind of way. 

“Anyway,” Dean says. He steps away and gives an exaggerated stretch. Sam can see the bulge in his jeans. “Time to hit the hay. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Sam looks back toward the window and it’s so much darker out there. When he turns back to Dean the house behind him is further cast into shadows, too. 

Sam tries not to make it obvious that he has to follow Dean down the short hall of the — their? — house. He didn’t notice it before, but the hanging artwork is a mis-match of family photos, hunting memorabilia, and what looks like something Sam would’ve picked out himself. He supposes he did. 

_Their_ bedroom is the last door upstairs on the left. Dean pushes it open and a soft light from a lamp is already on. Even this room looks familiar but Sam can’t perfectly place any of it.

Dean shrugs out of his jacket — _Dad’s_ jacket, the same worn leather now moulded to Dean’s body — and follows with his shirt and jeans. Sam swallows hard, but is grateful the black briefs stay on. He undresses himself with shaky fingers and follows Dean into the queen bed. It feels tiny. 

“Goodnight, Sammy,” Dean says and flashes him a wide smile. He kisses him again, soft and sweet, before turning over and switching off the lamp. Sam sees them arguing over which lamp pair to buy at IKEA. 

Of course Sam won. 

*

Sam dreams that night. 

Ugly, fierce dreams where he’s no longer in this world — or his old one. Sam sees monsters torturing and killing people. Huge mouths swallowing them whole and chains ripping humans limb from limb. A mirror. He sees himself. Dead, black eyes and a mouth dripping blood. Below him, Dean’s screaming body. 

Sam slices in. 

*

When Sam wakes, it’s more of the same. Monsters peering into windows bordered by sky blue drapes and are set in front of cream walls —

But next to him, Dean snores. Sam reaches out and gently touches his brother’s sleep-warm skin. The thin cotton sheet is set low, hugging Dean’s hips and leaving his back on display from the stars outside. They highlight his freckles and the ripple of muscle. 

Sam knows he’s allowed to look. 

*

Miraculously, Sam breezes his law school interview. All the answers come to his mind like a click of the fingers and the panel of interviewers nod amongst themselves as he speaks. Sam couldn’t remember studying for a single moment, but maybe he had? After all, when he’s on a hunt that becomes the focus and sometimes he forgets the rest of the world. 

Dean’s home before him, singing tunelessly in the kitchen. When Sam closes the front door — somehow he found his way home easily in what is apparently his own Dodge Charger — Dean pops his head around the doorway.

“Hey, honey,” he says. All he needs is the apron rather than his oily grey shirt. “How was your day at the office?”

“I don’t want to jinx it,” Sam says, shrugging out of his jacket. He’s suddenly boiling hot. “But I think they were pleased with me.”

“That’s my boy,” Dean says. He walks over and gives Sam shoulder a squeeze. It’s much colder than the room. “I guess all those late nights and blue balls paid off, huh?”

Sam can feel the blush creeping up his cheeks. “I guess so. What are you making?”

“Chilli,” Dean says. “Figured I’d put that crockpot of yours to good use.”

He kisses Sam, then. And Sam still isn’t used to it. Not after the first or second or third or fourth time. It sends shockwaves through his body and he can see it now; the memory of Sam complaining Dean needed something other than credit card scams because Sam wanted — _needed_ — normal, so he became a mechanic. Respectable. And he could leave to hunt whenever it was needed. The slow cooker was a joke and thank you gift rolled into one.

When Dean pulls back there’s a strange look on his face that Sam can’t read, but it gives him a jolt up his spine. This world...these memories and this Dean are something he needs to re-learn.

On the plus side it seems as though kissing Dean is the best way to do it. 

He cups his brother’s face and brings him in again. His lips opening and Sam greedily taking. He still doesn’t know what this is, or even if it’s really all that different. He’s starting to feel as though they’ve always been here. Ever since Dad left to hunt that ghoul up in Minnesota. Leaving them in the cabin. 

Sam’s memory takes him back there now, on top of a shaking Dean. He’s wet, droplets clinging to his tanned chest.

“Have we been swimming?” he asks stupidly.

“Mmm,” Dean says. He bites his lip, more worry than sexy but it makes Sam’s cock twitch all the same. “We don’t have to do this, Sam. I’m sorry, I should—“

The Sam in this memory shuts him up with a kiss, more brazen than Sam is now. Pushing and taking until Dean opens up for him and then sighing into his mouth.

Back here, back to the now, they’re in the bedroom. This time Dean is on top of him, smearing grease onto Sam’s crisp white shirt but Sam can’t bring himself to care. He wants to touch, lick, fuck...he wants everything he could never admit to himself before.

Dean makes quick work of Sam’s belt and tugs down his pants. Sam has a sneaking suspicion he’s trying to avoid a repeat of last night by getting in quick. 

“Celebrating, Sammy,” he says, and Sam is about to ask how the hell he read his mind before Dean has Sam’s cock free and in his mouth.

It’s better than Sam could ever imagine — and he had. A lot. His teenage wet dreams turned into adult fantasies that followed him to Stanford and beyond. Stalking him in motel rooms where Dean was so agonizingly close but Sam could never allow himself to touch. Now Dean is willingly bobbing his head on Sam’s cock like he’s been doing it for years.

Sam supposes he has.

He wants this is last. Forever and ever and then another lifetime. To have Dean suck him and then return the favour. He wants to feel Dean inside him and himself inside Dean.

“Dean,” he groans, tugging gently on his brother’s hair.

Dean just gives a devilish grin and slides down further. Sam can feel the contractions of Dean’s throat and he can’t last any longer. The orgasm rips through his body as he comes down his brother’s throat.

Dean pulls away with his grin turned triumphant, eyes dancing. Sam’s body still twitches.

“Now,” Dean says as he crawls back up Sam’s body. “I think it’s my turn to fuck you.”

Sam’s mouth turns dry but his cock makes a valiant attempt to get involved again, especially when Dean kisses him and its memories of so many times they’ve been together. Motel rooms, hunts, the impala, and in every room of this house. Dean pulls away and leans over to the bedside table. Sam watches as he takes out some lube.

“You don’t usually need this,” he says, popping the cap and spreading the sticky substance over his fingers. “But let’s see how we go, huh?”

Sam couldn’t imagine _not_ needing this, and he can’t find any memories telling him either way. He chooses to push it aside and lie back, trying to tell his body to calm down and relax. He knows it’ll make things easier. And he does want this. Truly. More than the little voice in his mind screaming _wrong, wrong, wrong_. 

Dean is back down at the end of the bed. Urging Sam’s legs apart.

“You can roll over.”

It’s a command as much as a suggestion, and Sam wonders when Dean became so bossy. The only time he ever used to be was on a hunt, and it always came down to Sam’s safety.

Still, Sam does as he’s told. Good little soldier — Dean would be proud of him for finally following orders. 

Dean presses Sam’s knees further apart. Vulnerable, exposed, and so fucking horny; Sam’s cock is already starting to thicken again.

“Good boy,” Dean says. Words Sam has never heard him speak before, not together like that. Dean presses two fingers inside and it’s both an intrusion and pleasure in Sam. A strange mix of feelings not unlike everything else he’s experienced in the last 48 hours.

He doesn’t think it’s Heaven anymore — but it’s certainly not Hell. He’s not really sure what to think. Purgatory? Dean never described it like this.

“You ready,” Dean says. Again, not a question. 

Sam nods anyway. He wants to feel Dean. All these years and he couldn’t even work up the courage to kiss him goodbye. He’d told himself he didn’t want to ruin anything, to tarnish clean memories, but deep down he knows he was just afraid. He hopes it hurts. Punishment and pleasure all rolled into one. It’s more than he deserves, even if he did try to save the damn world.

There’s no preamble on Dean’s part. One second his fingers are gone and Sam is left hollow, the next he’s thrusting himself inside.

It’s too real to be a dream, and he had dreamt of it — many times. Usually it was a smiling Dean above him, softer and sweeter than he’d ever dare show in real life. Now Sam could only see Dean by looking over his shoulder. Hands holding his hips and face almost blank. For a minute Sam wanted to pull away, to shake his head, but then Dean hit him _just right_ and all that dissipates. Dean thrusting a few more times before coming inside him and Sam closing his eyes to the sensation. 

*

Sam never noticed before, but they have a garden bed in the backyard. It's growing what looks like tomatoes and smells like basil. There’s flowers of every colour and shade peeking out between.

He goes to the library and reads up about backyard gardening: vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers. Finds out the main flower growing in every nook and cranny is the _lycoris radiate_ and it’s apparently rather hard to grow. Sam decides not to touch them since they seem to be doing fine on their own.

Dean comes out in the garden after work one night, greasy and sweaty and so beautiful Sam has to kiss him then and there. Dean picks one of the bright red flowers and holds it up to Sam.

“Be my Valentine?”

*

Dean tosses a newspaper onto their breakfast table. There’s flowers in the centre, dying, even though Sam swears they weren’t there yesterday and who picks already dead flowers to display?

“Looks like a hunt,” Dean says, stabbing his finger at a small article buried in the bottom corner of a page. **Local Teen Death Mystery.**

Sam picks up the paper and glides his eyes over it. The whole thing must be under 200 words. “Do you think a ghost? Maybe?”

“Damn right a ghost.” He snatches the paper back up and shoves it under his arm. “Maybe a demon if we’re lucky.”

“You _want_ a demon hunt?” Sam is totally over anything to do with demons, Hell, angels, the devil…

“Yep,” Dean says. “So hurry up.”

Sam downs his cereal and coffee quickly before going into their room and tossing together a methodical bag for a hunt. It’s still muscle memory. 

“We need to be in range in case I get a call,” Sam tells down the hall. 

“Yeah, yeah,” comes the muffled response. 

He tugs open the wardrobe door and his heart leaps to his throat.

It’s his dreams. Only _no_. This is real. He is awake and can see the bars of a jail cell just out of reach. Hills of fire spitting out at him. So real Sam can feel it on his arms and smell charred flesh imprinting itself inside his nostrils. 

He wants to reach out. To touch and see what would happen to his own skin. Another part of him wants to call out to Dean. To tell him there’s a hunt right here in their own room.

But he does neither of those things. Sam slams the door closed and goes to hunt. 

*

It turns out to be a simple ghost hunt and Sam feels useless. 

Dean goes in all rock salt guns blazing and blasts the ghost in ten minutes flat. Then has the grave dug while Sam struggles to shovel less than a dozen loads of dirt onto the grass.

“What’s up with you, Sammy?” Dean isn’t even breaking a sweat. 

“I...I don’t know.” Even his words are clumsy.

They — mostly Dean — finally hit the coffin and crack the 18th century wood open to expose dust and bone. Dean doses it with fuel and salt, lights a match, and they watch everything go up in flames.

*

That night they eat at a diner almost across the road from the cemetery. Sam swears he can see ghosts, ghouls, demons from the corner of his eye but Dean tells him to stop being stupid and order. 

“Sooner we eat, sooner we can get back to our room.” He winks. 

Sam stabs a finger at the menu near-random and the waitress appears. She scribbles down their orders without a word and Sam can’t help noticing the strange tattoo on her lips. It looks almost like barbed wire being threaded in and out, in and out. 

“Sam.”

Underneath the table, Dean presses his foot up against Sam’s. Across the top of the table he gives a bright smile. 

“You did good out there today.”

Sam looks at him. Tries to read through those eyes that have become so closed off these past few…days? Weeks? Sam’s lost track. But he remembers the hunt and Dean telling him to hurry up, look alive, work harder.

“Thanks,” is all he can eventually mutter. He sips at the water in front of him — was that here before — and the cold ice cubes knock against his teeth.

“I mean it,” Dean says.

He reaches across the table and touches Sam’s hand. Startled, Sam pulls back and knocks over his glass. It falls to the linoleum floor with a loud crack and woosh of water. A piece of glass manages to ricochet back and slice Sam’s arm. Droplets of red hurry to the ground and join the water. There’s too much for one single cup. The waitress from earlier hurries over. 

“Sorry,” Sam says. “I—“

“It’s okay, sir,” the waitress says. She drops to her knees right into the glass. She doesn’t even flinch. Her eyes stay averted.

Blood seeps from her knees and thighs, forming a pool on the linoleum floor. Her fingers drip red as she picks up the pieces of glass one by one by one and places them in a coffee mug.

Sam watches, transfixed, a sick feeling rising in him and turning his body a hot-cold. He darts to Dean who has a fucked-up smirk on his face. 

“Nice set of tits on her, huh?” he says. “Kneeling down like that.”

Back to the waitress, almost like he can’t control his eyes. She’s tracked her fingers over her cleavage and it’s rust red. Even her blonde hair is now streaked. She continues to pick up glass but the shattered pile doesn’t budge. 

Another waitress appears. She has the same lip tattoo. Sam looks around. Was the diner this filled before? People are crammed into every available seat, booth, and stool. Nobody is looking at the bloody waitress on the floor, but all of them seem to be sneaking glances at Dean. 

“Your food, sir,” the new waitress says. She shoves a plate of meat and ketchup at him. Sam’s stomach rolls. 

“Can we go?” he says in a voice that isn’t much more than a whisper.

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You just got your food.” He stabs a pancake. Dean’s plate looks normal; Sam’s looks like death. 

The waitress on the floor finally finishes picking up the glass and wiping up the water. She’s the colour of a dilapidated shed all over but her lips move upward into a faltering smile. “Enjoy your meal.”

*

Dean is inside him. 

It’s a hazy awareness that breaks through the barrier of sleep and becomes more solid as Sam’s eyes flutter open. Sam’s hard, his cock rubbing on the thin motel sheets. Dean’s mouth drops to his neck and kisses him right _there_. Sam moans; can’t help it.

Dean must be aware Sam’s awake but he says nothing. Keeps rhythmically fucking him, which is so hard and fast the bed is bashing against the wall. A few more thrusts and Dean stalls. Slumps against Sam’s back. He’s rolled off and is facing the wall before Sam can even say a word. 

What is happening?

*

The next morning, still in their motel room, Sam rolls over to take in the large expanse of Dean’s back. Rippling muscles lined with scars from every hunt. So many from Dean protecting people — Sam more than anyone. He can’t quite name them all, which frustrates Sam as he lightly traces them; once upon a time he would have known the exact origin of every one.

Dean stirs. Sam thinks about pretending to be asleep and hoping for a repeat of last night, but he also loved seeing his brother in the morning. Those sleepy, hooded eyes and plush lips that would slowly turn upward. Dean would always say he wasn’t a morning person, but Sam thinks that’s when he looked best. 

“Good morning,” Sam says, his own voice thick with sleep. He nibbles gently on Dean’s neck.

Dean’s eyes open wider and he loops a hand around Sam’s neck. His mouth opens into an easy grin before closing to kiss Sam soft and hard all at once.

He’ll never get used to this.

Sam trails his kisses down Dean’s broad, tanned chest until he reaches his quickly thickening cock. A lump rises in Sam’s throat and his heart hammers in his chest. He has no idea what he’s doing but refuses to let on. Dean was so amazing for him. Time to return the favour. 

He takes the tip of Dean into his mouth. A little salty, but mostly skin. Soft and hard in equal, perfect measures. Sam slides deeper.

He chokes a little, the shock of this new action. Dean grabs the back of his head and holds him steady.

“Just like that,” he says.

Sam manages to keep going. Sucking and trying to take him deeper as Dean guides the actions. He tries to look up but can’t quite find Dean’s eye at the angle. 

Not much longer and Dean is shoving Sam’s face deep. His pubes scratch Sam’s nose and his cock pushes so hard against Sam’s throat he’s sure it’s bruised. But then Dean is coming and Sam is swallowing and Sam is just damn proud he can give this to his brother. 

*

Sam isn’t accepted into law school. 

The letter is in his hands and he reads it over and over again before screwing it up and tossing it in the trash.

Dean never asks about it and Sam never volunteers the information. He just hangs around the home during the day and ruminates on _why_ . Why did the one thing he tried so hard for not work out? His memories of studying are clear now — all nighters, too much coffee to sustain a human, library sessions where he had to be asked to leave past closing. Now he has to either apply somewhere else or try some _thing_ else.

He just has no idea what.

Even though he’s home most of the time, it’s Dean who continues with the cooking. Growing more and more adventurous as he serves Sam _steak_ _tartare_.

“Since when do you eat raw meat?” Sam asks. “You don’t even order your steak rare.”

“Read it in a Julia Child cookbook,” he says with a straight face. “Eat up.”

The food on Sam’s plate looks _alive_ rather than just raw. He swears it’s wriggling and the blood is dripping off. Sam might not be a culinary genius, but he’s pretty sure this isn’t right. He pushes the plate away.

“Eat,” Dean says.

Sam looks up. His brother’s eyes look dark, matching his tone. Sam’s never seen him like this.

“Look, Dean, I’ll shout us a pizza—“

“Eat!” Dean slams his knife down on the table and Sam flinches. 

He picks at the food, ignoring the stare he can feel Dean boring into his skull. Sam’s stomach turns and the food looks more and more alive the longer he tears it apart. He takes a bite and tastes the sourness on his tongue, feels it _move_ as he struggles to swallow.

When he finally looks up, Dean gives him a cruel laugh and Sam swears his eyes are black.

*

Dean fucks him again that night, but he’s back to gentle and loving. A tender kiss that takes Sam back to a memory of them at the beach, water warm and the sun bright. It’s just the two of them, their own little world, and in the water Dean cups Sam’s face and coats his mouth in salt. 

When he sleeps he can hear Dean but can’t see him. All he can see is blood and hellfire, souls screaming for freedom. Dean is saying Sam’s name over and over again, becoming more and more desperate until Sam screams at him to shut up. Shut up. He’s here — he’s next to him. Shut up!

Sam wakes in a sweat and Dean pulls him closer, pressing kisses to his neck.

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean murmurs. “It’s not real. This is real. Go back to sleep.”

Sam listens.

*

Sam still spends his days in and around the house. He knows he needs to do something more — whether it’s study, finding a job, or going back to full-time hunting. He knows which Dean would prefer, but Sam ran from all of that and it seems like a betrayal to himself to go back.

Each day, the house almost seems a little different. The artwork near the front door he swore was of a sunrise over the horizon now looks more like a desert scape with jagged rocks reaching for the sky. All the family portraits have been replaced by shadowy insignia he’s never seen before. Maybe Dean took them away — not willing to face his family when they’re living in sin like this.

It still didn’t explain the replacements. Protection spells? Wouldn’t Dean come to him for guidance on that? Maybe he did and Sam just doesn’t remember — that’s been happening a lot lately. 

Dean usually manages to get home from work at about 6, sweaty and oily and so sexy Sam wants to jump him then and there. Tonight the clock’s ticking over 7 and there’s no sign of Dean.

Sam thinks about calling for takeout when the telltale rumble of the impala fills the air and he can’t help but smile. This life they’ve built together is more than Sam could ever dream of, he just wishes he could properly piece it all together instead of finding wayward puzzle pieces that don’t always fit the ones he already has.

The door opens and then slams shut. Sam walks toward it, wondering what sort of day Dean had — he knows the job was never supposed to be permanent, maybe they had no work left for him? It’d be okay.

“Hey, Dean,” Sam says, hoping his smile can make his brother’s day at least a little better. He wraps his arms around Dean’s neck and brings him in for a kiss. 

As soon as their lips touch, all Sam can see is blood and fire spitting as a woman clings to the ceiling. He pulls back. 

Dean is staring at him, his jaw rigid. “What are you doing?”

“Kissing...you?” Sam says. The image still dances behind his eyes. He knows the woman, but he can’t place her. 

The look Dean gives him makes Sam’s stomach churn, and he’s pretty sure he’s about to throw up. It’s confusion and disgust and _hate_ all thrown into one. Sam can’t breathe.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Dean says. Slow, like Sam’s an idiot. “But just stop...okay?”

Sam can’t say anything. He can’t even look at Dean. He has no idea what just happened. Were these last few weeks a lie? He looks around — anywhere but Dean — and the house has taken on a new appearance again. No photographs of them together; none at _all_. The walls are a barren and dirty white. 

“I only came in to grab some supplies,” Dean says.

“For what?” Sam finds himself following Dean down the hall, the floor gritty under his feet. He looks down and sees dirt caked into the carpet.

Dean opens the end door and inside is a full size bed, not the queen Sam swears he slept in last night. It’s littered with papers and clothes thrown over the foot — but only Dean’s clothes. Sam recognizes none of his own.

“Move, Sam.”

Dean is standing, glaring at him, and how did he move so fast? Sam robotically steps aside. His stomach is still in knots. 

“Where are you going?”

“Hunt,” Dean says. He brushes past Sam and it feels like fire, coiling in his heart and mixing with the nausea of his belly.

“What? Why?”

Dean stops and Sam forces himself to look at his brother again. He hates what he sees.

“Because there are monsters out there,” Dean says. His voice is venom and Sam wishes he could go back, to figure out what happened.

“I—I’ll come with you,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me about it this morning?”

“I did,” Dean says flatly. “You told me you’d rather go to school than waste your days out in the woods with me.”

“No, I didn’t,” Sam says. He remembers this morning — the way Dean cupped his face, kissed him, and promised to be safe. Always be safe. “I didn’t get into law school, Dean, I meant to tell you—“

“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” Dean says. He starts walking again, towards the front door, and Sam all but runs after him. “I’ve got a wraith to hunt.”

“Please,” Sam says. He throws his arm up so Dean can’t open the door. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

Dean still looks at him with disgust. Maneuvers his body away so they’re not touching. Sam aches.

“I don’t want you there,” Dean says. “Between your sloppy, out of practice hunting and whatever fucked up fetish you’ve taken hold of, I’d really rather not be around you right now.”

Sam’s arm drops and his stomach rolls. He watches Dean leave.

*

It’s been three days. Radio silence and Sam can’t find any bars of reception no matter where he stands in the house or the yard or the street. 

After the fourth day he gets too antsy to sit still. He leaves their house and drives toward the road he remembers them taking to their ghost hunt less than two weeks ago. Only, for some reason, he finds himself back home. Again and again. An endless circles of a darkening town and he swears it’s always the same people walking by hour after hour: the couple with their dog, the woman with her baby, the guy who stares him down with black eyes and charred skin.

Sam finally stops the car back home and locks the doors. Nightmares of killing plague him. The repeat over and over until everything is so red with blood he can taste it on his soul.

*

It feels like years before Dean returns, but Sam knows that can’t be true. He looks in the mirror and nothing has changed but he swears he made the bed five hundred and seventy three mornings before the front door swings open and Dean saunters in.

It takes Sam a minute to even recognize who it is, and that throws him; no matter how far apart or for how long Sam could always trace his brother’s features. He knows every individual freckle, every silver scar, and now even the feel of him from the _inside_. But this Dean looks like a stranger until he speaks and his features mould into the brother Sam knows and loves.

Anger boils over and out of Sam.

“Where were you?” he demands.

“Hunting,” Dean says, like Sam is a goddamn idiot. No hunt took over 500 days.

“No call? Nothing?”

“I called,” Dean says with a nonchalant shrug. He walks into the kitchen and dumps his duffel bag. Sam notices the kitchen walls seem to be bleeding. A tacky residue turning from red the brown the closer it comes to the skirting boards. “Just figured you were busy — we don’t need to be joined at the hip, Sam. Get some independence.”

Sam wants to punch him. To throw Dean’s own blood over the walls, and he hates the way Dean is making him feel. Were they always like this? So cruel and messed up? He wants to kiss and hurt Dean in equal measures.

“I’m gonna go out for a beer,” Dean says. Like he hasn’t just come home. “Don’t wait up.”

Sam doesn’t even bother arguing.

*

The bed is pounding against the shared wall. They have separate rooms now, somehow, and Sam’s is little more than a closet. His bed is scratchy, cold, wet. Flesh coloured and dripping. He can hear Dean swearing, moaning, and the girl he’s with giggling. She’s got curly blonde hair and legs that stretch for miles — Sam knows her but he doesn’t.

Sam doesn’t sleep, and he hears her leave as the sun is peeking through his tiny window. It’s always red these days, whether sunrise or sunset, and never lasts long enough to be considered a full day. The world outside is usually black and smoky, tendrils sometimes creeping in if he doesn’t keep all the doors and windows locked tight. He’s not sure why he’s afraid of it, only that he is.

Sam swings his legs over the bed and winces as his feet touch what feels like glass. Deep cuts and gashes as he pads to Dean’s room. The hallway carpet is still a dirty grit that never leaves no matter how often Sam vacuums.

Dean’s door swings open before Sam can even knock.

“Did you _see_ her?” Dean asks. He’s naked and Sam has to force himself not to look down. “Those damn tits, Sammy, geez.”

Sam wants to scream at him to shut up, but he just can’t find the will inside himself anymore. All he manages is, “Okay, Dean.”

Dean’s face changes, almost into the unrecognizable mask he had on yesterday when he walked through the door. One Sam doesn’t understand. He takes a step toward Sam, another, and crowds their bodies together.

“Come on, Sam,” Dean says. Sam swallows. “Don’t pretend like you don’t want me.”

Dean takes Sam’s hand and presses it against his cock. Sam can feel it thickening, the heat emanating. Despite himself, Sam wraps his hand around its girth. 

“See,” Dean says. “I knew you did.”

Sam strokes his brother to full hardness and pushes away everything else; the thoughts of why and where and what is going on with Dean. He ignores the roar of wind outside and the grey smoke he can see leaking through Dean’s window. If he shuts off his brain and just lets himself _feel_ , everything becomes okay.

Dean guides them back to the messy bed that stinks of sex and that awful smoke. _Block it out. All of it_. Sam falls, lying back and gazing up at Dean. It’s enough, all of it is enough. He’ll take these scraps and he’ll hold on because it’s better than any alternative.

It’s not like Sam had never left Dean before.

Dean provides minimal prep. Spit and two rough fingers. Sam arches into the burn and finds himself telling Dean, “Faster. Hurry up.” For once, Dean listens. He’s filling Sam up and Sam closes his eyes, gripping his brother’s shoulders and riding out the sensation.

“Heya, Sam.”

Sam’s eyes fly open. At first all he can take in is darkness, but soon features appear in front of his eyes. A human face with singed holes mottled all over. Sam’s body tenses. He tries to rip away but this being — _Lucifer_ — holds itself in. He gives a smile, the same face-consuming grin of evil Sam swears Dean ( _not Dean not Dean_ ) wore. 

“What?” Lucifer asks, leaning in close. There’s hellfire dancing in his eyes. “You didn’t _really_ believe it, did you?”

Around them, souls scream.

“Did you really think Dean would come back to you? To try and save you? I know you humans make up elaborate fantasies to try and stay sane while I’m inside you, but really Sam — I thought you were better than that.”

Lucifer never stops talking. 

“You pretended to be him,” Sam says. Some days Sam never speaks. He just lets the words wash over him or stab like a knife through his gut. Other days he yells and screams but nobody except Lucifer and Michael ever hear him. 

“You chose to believe,” Lucifer says. Today he’s in his true form, a blinding light that illuminates everything outside the cage; the burning souls and tortured demons strung up with thick chains. Sam tries not to look up but it's impossible. “I didn’t do that great a job.”

 _Yes you did_.

“Well thanks for the compliment, buddy.”

Sam forgets Lucifer can read every thought that crosses his mind. Every spark of hatred. Every want and need for Dean.

But Dean isn’t coming. Sam told him not to.

“You’ve got that right, too.” Lucifer grips Sam’s jaw and forces him to look. The light is blinding and Sam’s body burns. “You. Me. We have all eternity to spend here. Together.”

Sam says nothing.

“And Dean’s happy with his cherry pie life, living it up with Lisa.”

“You don’t know what Dean’s doing,” Sam says. Despite all Lucifer’s bravado he’s just as trapped down here as Sam is.

“I know he listens to you — at least when it benefits him.” Lucifer drops Sam’s jaw and Sam’s head snaps back against the bars of the cage. He swears it hurts more in here than back on the surface. “Why do you think he said yes but left Mikey with second best?”

Lucifer constantly circles back to this argument, and Sam thinks it will be what sends him truly crazy.

“Dean’s always been looking for a way to leave you — Cassie, Lisa, Dad. He was even happy to run away to _juvy_.”

_I ran, too. A lot more._

“You might be the one always running, Sammy, but Dean didn’t want you. Not when something better came along.”

The souls outside scream louder, and Sam wonders just how much Lucifer can control from in here.

A click of his fingers and Sam can hear the telltale slice of metal on flesh. Knives carving and tearing. The screams stop, only for a moment, then Lucifer clicks his fingers and they resume again.

“It’s like a merry-go-round,” Lucifer says. “But I never let it stop.”

*

“Do you know why Dean didn’t say yes to Michael?”

Today is talk day. There’s no fantasy, no rape, not even flaying. Just Lucifer sitting on the floor of the cage while Sam is strung up and forced to listen. Michael rocks in the corner.

“Because he _knew_ I’d throw him into this pit — and Dean didn’t want to sacrifice himself like that. He was willing to let you go so he could be happy. And, you know, save the world. You can be truly altruistic, Sammy.”

Sam only peaks up through his eyelashes. He knows none of this is true.

“You’ve gotten good at pretending, I’ll give you that.” Lucifer stands and saunters over to Sam. Running his hands through his hair, he grows larger than Sam and forces their mouths together. Sam spits. “Aw, come on. It’s not that bad.”

 _It's worse_.

Some days, Lucifer is Dean again, and he creates a beautiful facade. Letting Dean — Lucifer — build him a home, cook him dinner, make love to him.

When he’s feeling particularly cruel, Lucifer will show his true form halfway through, cackling maniacally as he fucks Sam over and over. It’s worse than the beatings and the torture.

Sickeningly, Sam finds himself _wishing_ for Lucifer’s fake Dean. To live in the make believe world where he’s safe, if only for a little while. It feels like days or weeks or years or seconds but it’s enough. It’s a break —

“Your wish is my command, Sammy.”

Back in the California house, the smell of burgers grilling on a barbecue. Sam walks around the corner to see Dean cooking, a beautiful smile on his face and Sam lets himself fall.

*

One day, it’s different.

The souls aren’t screaming quite as loud, and the darkness seems a little less black. Even Michael is looking around, albeit in a daze. Adam stays hidden inside him and Lucifer has taken on his favourite form of Dean as he taunts Sam. That part hasn’t changed.

“So we have forever,” he says, sauntering over and matching Sam’s eyes. He has that perfect attention to detail — the green eyes that stare into Sam’s soul and tear him open.

“You _are_ a soul now, Sam,” Lucifer says. “Get with the program.”

It sounds so much like something Dean would say and Sam wants to fall into it. To pretend.

“You can,” his voice is softer now. Husky. Sam drinks him up. “We can pretend for as long as you want.”

How long has he been here? How many days has he let himself play make believe? Sam doesn’t want to know these answers as he squeezes shut his eyes and kisses Dean.

When he opens his eyes they’re in a motel room. Cheesy psychedelic sheets under them on the bed and peeling navy blue wallpaper surrounding them on all other sides. They’re still kissing but now clothes have been shed and they’re both hard. Pressed against each other. Dean is whispering “Sammy, Sammy, Sammy” over and over again. 

The world rumbles and it’s Dean — _Lucifer_ — _Dean_ — who pulls away first. They’re back in the cage. Sam can’t help but notice the confusion in Lucifer’s eyes. Lucifer is never confused. This is supposed to be his domain.

Another rumble followed by a _crack_ breaks through the cage. Even Michael raises his head and looks around. 

A sudden, blinding pain strikes between Sam’s eyes and doubles him over. It’s a worse pain than any torture Lucifer could think to dole out before and Sam wonders if there’s another death after this one.

“What is it?” Lucifer roars into the abyss. He takes on his true form, that blinding light, but Sam’s world is turning dark.


	2. Chapter 2

**PART TWO**

_I swear, I end up feeling empty,  
_ _like you’ve taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars_  
— from Crush by Richard Siken

The burning over his clenched eyes has spread throughout Sam’s entire body. The tips of his fingers feel ashen and his chest aches as though a red-hot spear has pierced every organ on its way through. His body isn’t his. Lucifer must be back inside him.

“Sammy, Sammy.”

A cold hand on his forehead and Sam tears his eyes open. Dean — _Lucifer_ — is staring at him. That same look of confusion on his face, but the world isn’t rumbling anymore.

“Get away from me,” Sam grits from between his teeth. He can’t pretend right now. He just can’t. “You can’t have it both ways.”

“Sam? What? It’s me — Sam.” Dean touches his cheek, his arms. His touch cools Sam but doesn’t slow his heartbeat. “I got you out. I got you out.”

Sam forced himself to look beyond Lucifer. He’s back in that motel room. Or a close approximation. The walls are more of a dusty white and the bedsheets are not so bright. Lucifer is gazing down at him from the edge of a battered nightstand. Sam tries to pull away but it sends another jolt of heat coursing through his body.

“Leave me alone,” he moans. Black spots dance in his vision and he so wants to pass out. To disappear into the corner of his mind he carved out to keep Lucifer away. He’s so, so tired of all of this.

“Sleep,” Lucifer says. “Just sleep, Sammy. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

That’s what Sam’s afraid of.

*

Sam sleeps without dreams and wakes without pain. It’s dark out, only the slightest speckles of light filtering in from outside. Yellow-white light from streetlights. Not the red and orange of hellfire flames.

“Sam.”

Sam turns. Lucifer with Dean’s face is still right where he said he’d be. Dark circles are carved out under his eyes and there are scratches over one side of his face. Sam reaches out to touch. Impulse. Then draws away quickly before making contact and shivers.

“Are you cold?” Dean asks.

It’s only now that Sam realizes his skin is wet. Sweat-coated sheets, clothes, and hair clinging to him uncomfortably. The window is open just a crack but it lets in enough of a breeze to freeze Sam’s body. He nods. Regrets it. Too late.

Rustling in a cabinet, Lucifer appears with a piled woolen blanket. Patchwork. Sam’s mind is sent back, back to Dean and the cabin and their first time. Only now it doesn’t feel like a memory. Now it doesn’t feel real.

“No,” he says. His throat is scratchy, dry. Like he hasn’t had a drink of water in ten years and, he supposes, he hasn’t. 

Lucifer’s face drops. Sam’s never seen that expression on him before. “You don’t want it?”

“I want you to leave me alone,” Sam says. His voice is so hoarse it cracks on the last syllable.

Lucifer drops back onto the bedside table and lays his face in his hands. Sam hates his act. His fakery of emotions. What’s he trying to do, make Sam _feel_ something? Why does the Devil need Sam Winchester’s pity?

“We need to go to Bobby’s,” Lucifer says finally. His eyes are rimmed in red but inside they’re a normal mixture of hazel, white, black. Sam waits for the black to engulf and turn red.

“No,” Sam says. He doesn’t need anyone else to be magically brought into this world. His head pounds. All he wants to do is sleep, but he knows the dreams will return in no time. He’s realized now they’re his look through the veil into what’s really going on in the cage. 

“I don’t know what else to do.”

Sam closes his eyes. He can rest without sleeping for as long as Lucifer wants to keep up this charade. Sam much prefers the one where he and Dean are a happy couple and spend their time fucking. 

It’s easier to pretend. 

*

Sam must fall back asleep. Again, without dreams. Or at least none he can remember.

Lucifer must be building up to something big. Conserving all his power and energy to tear Sam’s mind apart.

Over on the other bed — two twin beds again, but the same room now — is soft snoring. Sam peels back his covers and presses his feet to the floor, preemptively wincing at the expectation of either crunchy dirt or glass shards. He receives neither. His feet touch down on a slightly threadbare carpet. He allows himself to put down more weight and rises. Unsteady. His legs feel weak and out of use.

Sam stumbles over to the other bed and stares down at the face of his brother. He truly _looks_ to be sleeping, but Lucifer has pulled smarter ruses before. Sam reaches out. Touches the face. He waits for the eyes to fly open and burn red. Lucifer snores louder, shakes his head a little, and rolls over. Sam stays there for what feels like an eternity. Waiting.

*

“I found us a hunt,” Lucifer says the next morning. He’s eating Lucky Charms which Sam knows is a sick joke to remind him of childhood. At least the marshmallows aren’t leaking ectoplasm and the charms aren’t turning into razor blades.

“Yeah?” Sam says. He swirls around his own bowl of soggy cereal Lucifer insisted on pouring him. Sam’s dead. He doesn’t need to eat.

“Big drive. Louisiana.”

Sam says nothing. He doesn’t even know what state they’re in and it’s not like he has a choice. Either he gets in the impala or Lucifer will make the surroundings change to his chosen location. At least with the former Sam can delay the inevitable.

They leave after Lucifer drinks two more cups of coffee, which is new. Sam lets him pack the bags and return the key to reception. He’s not going to run. He hopes Lucifer takes them ‘home’ after the hunt and Sam can slowly forget it’s all a charade.

Lucifer turns up the stereo — a rotating mix tape of Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Motörhead — and taps his fingers on the steering wheel along to the beat. They could be anywhere. On any past hunt, him and Dean. Sam wonders if Lucifer broke into Heaven’s archives and decided to give Sam a little respite with what he found there. 

“So how are you?” Lucifer asks. His favorite question. Does he want Sam to break down and confess he’s fucking terrified? That he’d rather be dead and _gone_ than deal with all this?

“I’m fine.” Standard reply. They continue to drive with only the music for conversation. 

*

The sign for Singer Salvage Yard hails at them from a few miles away. 

Sam sits bolt upright. “Why are we here?”

“I’m sorry,” Lucifer says. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel and he speeds up. Sam thinks about jumping out. 

They pull up the endless drive and it’s just as Sam remembers it. Which makes sense: Lucifer lived inside his mind. Broken down cars and twice as many assorted pieces from others are everywhere he can see. Sam’s stomach clenches tighter and tighter as they near the house. Cold sweat drips down the nape of his neck. 

They stop just outside the door. Lucifer kills the engine but makes no effort to leave. 

“Just get it over with,” Sam says. His voice shakes and he swallows down the bubbling nausea. What’s he going to find in here? More scenes of Hell?

Lucifer opens the impala door with its eternally familiar creak and Sam follows suit. His legs are like cement as the dirt and stones crunch under him. The air is warm but a cooler breeze passes through. Everything is so real. 

Walking to the door takes an eternity as Sam trails Lucifer. _Knock knock knock_ . It’s a few more long, slow minutes before the door opens and there stands Bobby. He seems no different than the last time Sam saw him, but he _knows._

“Dean,” Bobby says. Then he looks beyond Lucifer and his eyes widen. His face drops before settling into a hard line. “Sam?”

“It’s him,” Lucifer says. His voice is strangely thick and clogged like Dean’s used to get after an all-nighter. “I got him out, Bobby. I — it’s Sam.”

Bobby steps off the porch. His eyes don’t leave Sam’s as he maneuvers around Lucifer then, before Sam can react, reaches into his pocket and throws water in Sam’s face.

“He’s not possessed—“

Sam blinks back at the droplets running down his face. True holy water or another of Lucifer’s illusions? Bobby grabs him around the shoulders and brings him in for a hard hug. Sam looks over his shoulder at Lucifer and sees the water sprinkled on his bare hand. Either it’s an illusion or that can’t be Lucifer. But wouldn’t it burn Sam anyway?

“Come inside, boys,” Bobby says. His hand remains tightly gripped to Sam’s shoulder as he guides him inside. Like Sam might collapse or bolt if he’s let go. The front door is swinging open in the breeze and Sam freezes when he steps inside. 

It’s familiar. Too familiar. Jumbled in his brain and trying to escape in the form of puke through his mouth. Sam spent so many days, weeks, years here as a kid and teenager. Sleeping on a tiny twin bed with its gingham blanket and surrounded by the thousands of books Bobby hoarded. 

But from this vantage point it seems too uncanny to be one of the layouts Lucifer created. Dean — Lucifer? — steps up beside him and next to _him_ Sam sees a flicker of bright light. He closes his eyes and breathes in hard through his nose.

“You okay, Sam?” Whoever-the-hell-it-is beside him asks. Sam’s head aches with the confusion and unknown. 

Finding the strength in himself, Sam nods and steps forward. They go through the entrance and into the kitchen where Bobby serves them bitter coffee and neither he nor Lucifer stray their gaze away from Sam. Waiting for him to attack or disappear or cry or all three.

This waiting game is also Sam’s. Something about Lucifer has to crack sooner or later. Being in the cage has made him falter. His facade has always crumbled around the edges. 

Sam sips his coffee and it doesn’t burn him or turn to blood. From the corner of his eye that bright spark is there but it disappears whenever Sam turns. 

The corner of his other eye watches Dean and waits for Lucifer to emerge. 

*

He can’t sleep in this room. 

The walls are closing in on him and the ceiling is drooping low. Despite the weight of their lids his eyes pull open to keep watch. 

Sam gets out of bed, tugs on his clothes and boots, and goes outside into the freezing midnight air. 

Compared to the heat of Hell he would always choose this.

It’s even harder to find his bearings at night but Bobby has a floodlight illuminating one side of the house so that’s the way Sam goes. 

The impala is parked just around the corner. Unlocked. Like it was waiting for him. He gets inside and lies on the backseat, closing his eyes and breathing. These walls don’t close in on him. This ceiling doesn’t dip. 

He’s safe enough for now. 

Sam is just starting to drift off to sleep when he hears footsteps crunching in the gravel outside. His heart leaps to his throat and Sam strains to see around the corner as a shadowed figure approaches. 

Stepping into the light is Dean.

Sam knows this has to be Dean. 

_Please_

He opens the car door and sees Dean reach to his back pocket for his gun. But he must realize it’s Sam and he speeds up. 

“I thought—“ Dean says and is cut off to swallow. Sam sees his throat working. “I thought you were _gone_.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Sam offers lamely. 

“Shove over,” Dean says. 

Sam does. He sits up and shuffles to the other side of the backseat. Dean gets in and closes the door. It’s cramped — how did they ever curl up on either side and sleep here?

“How are you?” Dean asks. “ _Really_?”

The light from outside only just hits the impala. Enough for Sam to see the basics of Dean’s face but not its features. He wants to reach out and touch. To trace his fingertips over every line and freckles. Sam wants to convince himself _this_ is the real Dean; that Lucifer could never truly recreate Sam’s beloved brother. 

“Did you really save me?” Sam’s voice is hardly above a whisper. He can’t push enough air from his lungs to his mouth.

“I did, Sammy,” Dean’s own voice is soft but sounds amplified in the enclosed space of the impala. It soothes Sam. “I did. I’m real. I’m here and you’re here and we’re safe.”

Sam lets out a shuddering breath. 

“I promise, Sam,” Dean says. “And I’m going to help you get better. We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Sam lets himself fall into the belief. Just like when they were kids. When it fell on Dean to convince Sam things were going to be okay. That Dad would come home, that they’d have enough food for the week. That monsters couldn’t possibly get in past the flimsy motel locks. He leans back in the car. He stares at Dean. He feels the safest he has in a long while.

*

Sleep and wake are becoming muddled in Sam’s mind. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He doesn’t remember Dean leaving. But now he’s alone in the impala as day breaks through and—

“You’re not alone, Sammy.”

Sam jumps and his head slams against the room. Turned around in the driver’s seat is Lucifer-as-Nick staring at him with a sick smile pulled across his face.

“You didn’t _really_ believe ‘Dean’, did you?” Dean is in air quotation marks. 

Sam opens the car door and jumps out. Weaving through the wrecks and other junk. Lucifer appears suddenly in front of him. He’s taller, all stretched out to unnatural proportions and towering over Sam. This can’t be real. Sam strains to see into the house and _there_. It’s Dean. Standing in the kitchen with a beer in his hand.

“And how do you know that’s real?”

Sam stumbles over a discarded bumper and Lucifer shrinks back. _Not real. Dean got me out. Lucifer isn’t real._

He gets inside the house and slams the door so hard books around him shake. Dean comes rushing down the hall. 

“Sam?” he says. “What is it?”

Sam’s almost certain this is the real Dean but still says nothing; shakes his head as an answer and goes into the kitchen. 

There’s beer in the fridge and not much else. Sam grabs one out, twists the lid, and drinks deeply.

“Hey,” Dean says, following him into the room and sliding onto a chair. His hair is tousled and his eyes sport deep bags. Sam probably doesn’t look much better. “Don’t start learning coping mechanisms from me.

Sam finishes the beer in two more greedy swallows and tosses the empty bottle into an overflowing trash can. He waits for the pleasant head spin of drinking alcohol so fast but nothing comes. If anything it amplifies the glowing body shape to the corner of his eye. When he looks properly it’s no longer there. 

Sam was stupid. Of course the light was trueform Lucifer taunting as always. 

“Do you wanna try going back to bed?” Dean asks. “It’s not even 6 yet.”

“We should find a hunt,” Sam says, shocking even him. “Something. Anything. Ghost? Zombie?”

This time Sam won’t let Dean leave without him. No way. Never. 

Just then, a door upstairs slams and feet come pounding down the stairs. Bobby emerges and Sam’s heart slows.

“Morning, boys,” he says. He’s already dressed with a worn baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. “Bacon and eggs?”

“No, we—“ Sam tries to say but Dean cuts him off.

“Breakfast would be great,” Dean says with a pointed look at Sam. 

Defeated, Sam sits. He waits. His fingers clench and unclench into fists against his knees. 

Bobby busies himself at the stove until there’s three plates piled high with bacon, eggs, and toast. At least for a moment. As soon as Sam sticks his fork in yolk explodes out in the yellow-white-red of blood tinged pus and Sam sees white worms wriggling. Nobody else seems to notice anything amiss. Even the coffee Bobby sets down next to Sam’s plate is the dark red of blood. Everything smells rotten. Bobby and Dean talk like nothing is wrong and Sam knows that bright light is still there. Just out of reach. 

_This is real_. 

A hand on his shoulder startles Sam. He turns around to see Dean — _the real Dean?_ — standing there with a quizzical look on his face. 

“Everything okay, Sam?”

With a nod, Sam pushes from the table. “Not hungry.” He wills his voice to stop shaking. “I’m going to take a shower.”

They don’t try to stop him though Sam knows Dean wants to make him sit and eat and be _okay_ before he’s let out of Dean’s sight again. Sam doesn’t have the heart to tell his brother he’s not sure things will ever be okay again. 

Once in Bobby’s closet-sized bathroom — more books stacked on shelves and the toilet cistern to add to the feeling of claustrophobia — Sam locks the door and turns to look at himself in the mirror.

He almost wishes he hadn’t.

The Sam Dean has supposedly brought back is gaunt in face and upper body. He raises his hand to touch his hollowed out cheeks and dark under-eyes. Drops it back down. His hair falls in limp strands over his forehead.

Through it all is the incessant knowledge that Lucifer is _right there_ in Sam’s peripheral vision. 

Sam showers. The water is deliberately on the boiling side of hot. Steaming up the shower glass and blocking out the mirror. Sam washes his hair with the surprisingly fruity shampoo Bobby has in the stall and sees dirt drip from his body, turning the water sludge brown, gurgling down the drain. 

When he decides Dean’s going to be worried and come kicking down the door at any moment, Sam shuts off the shower and steps out. The steam dissipates far too quickly and Sam is staring at the same horrible — albeit cleaner — reflection of himself. 

For some unknown reason he decides to shave. He knows Bobby keeps a cup of disposable razors under the sink and, sure enough, there they are. How would Lucifer know that little detail?

“I’m in your head, Sam. Of course I know.”

Sam jumps and the razor slips, causing an ugly jagged cut on his already hideous cheek. Lucifer flickers, disappears as quickly as he came. Sam quickly finishes up and goes to rejoin his brother. 

At least that’s who he hopes the Dean out in the kitchen is. 

*

It starts small. 

A demon throwing him against a wall on their next hunt. Hissing in Sam’s ear that it knows what Sam is, what’s _inside_ him, and that image of Lucifer flickers in and out with the pain searing Sam’s arm and back. 

Then it’s not just on hunts. 

There’s never a shortage of knives in Sam’s possession and once there’s a cut or two on his skin he can keep opening it up when Lucifer goes from glowing entity to human form.

If Dean notices he doesn’t say anything. Once they’re gone from Bobby’s it’s like Sam never went to Hell. Like he never became Lucifer’s plaything. 

One part of Sam is grateful: With Dean he can pretend those things never did happen, but another part of him is confused. He wonders if he truly _is_ back or if this is just another of Lucifer’s cruel tricks.

“Heya, Sam.”

Lucifer is in the backseat. Sam doesn’t turn. He doesn't let Dean notice anything is astray. Sam can just see Lucifer’s face from the side view mirror. 

“Does it really matter,” Lucifer says, grabbing hold of Sam’s headrest and leaning his mouth in next to Sam’s ear. There’s no breath. “Whether this is real or fake? I’m still here.”

Sam looks straight ahead but he can still feel Lucifer’s presence. When Lucifer touches his shoulder he can’t suppress a shudder and Dean is there, watching Sam through the corner of his eye. 

Dean’s eyebrows quirk up. “Cold spot?”

“It’s just the window,” Sam says. “Chill.”

“You can wind it up.”

_Not shit, Dean._

Sam wants to dig his fingertips into the hastily bandaged wound on his upper arm. He wants to open it up and let the red blood flow until Lucifer vanishes. 

“Don’t want Dean to know, huh?” Lucifer says. “How about you tell him about your fantasies? About your dreams here in Hell?”

 _Shut up_ , Sam wants to scream. _Shut up, shut up, shut up_. But he knows it won’t do anything except make Dean think he’s crazy. 

They’re driving down a long, straight road with crop fields on either side as far as Sam can see. 

“Remind you of something?” Lucifer asks. 

_Yes_. The highway Sam took on his way to his and Dean’s supposed house. But the fields don’t make way to green hills or yellow dessert. They stay the golden and brown of wheat fields. 

Sam squeezes his arm and Lucifer flickers ever so slightly. Dean’s still watching Sam more than the road. 

“Sure you’re okay?”

Close enough to okay. He’d be better if he could get this shirt and bandage off and make Lucifer disappear for a few hours. If he could sleep without nightmares. 

“Fine,” Sam says. 

“We’ll stop at the next motel,” Dean days. “No need to cross state lines in a day.”

There’s the worried Dean. The one that isn’t toting his favourite line about them burning daylight. But Sam is tired. And he wants the privacy of a bathroom to help him sleep. 

“Might be a ways away,” Dean says. “We’re in the middle of freakin’ nowhere.”

It’s true. The fields are still stretching out on either side of them.

“ _I’m on the hiiighway to Hell_ ,” Lucifer starts singing. Louder than the music from Dean’s cassette player. “ _On the_ _hiiighway to Hell_.”

Sam tries his best to block Lucifer out. He closes his eyes and stays completely still. He can feel both Dean and Lucifer’s eyes on him. 

“Sam.”

It’s Dean touching his chest. Sam’s eyes fly open and there’s no Lucifer in sight. Just him and Dean in the car, a buzzing motel sign in front of them and a few stray cars parked around.

“Here already?” Sam says. He didn’t think he’d dozed off. 

“Yeah.” Dean’s hand is still on him but now it’s tracing small, firm circles through Sam’s shirt. It sends Sam’s heart into overdrive.

“What are you doing?” His voice is tight.

Dean leans forward. Time seems to stop or is it just Sam holding his breath? The space is cleared and Dean’s lips are on him. His hand balling up Sam’s shirt and dragging him closer. Deepening the kiss and holding Sam close. 

Until he morphs into Lucifer and Lucifer laughs and laughs. 

“Sam.”

Dean again. Hand on Sam’s chest. Sam scrambles away as far as the car will let him. 

“Stop it,” Sam says. His voice is weak, pathetic. He squeezes his arm tighter until he can feel wet blood seeping through his shirt but still Lucifer is here.

“Jesus, Sam,” Lucifer says. “When did you hurt your arm?”

He stops the car on the side of the road, tires kicking up a storm of dust as the pads try to grip from high speed. As soon as they’ve slowed enough Sam is out and running. 

He doesn’t get far before Lucifer is tackling him down. He’s weak, malnourished, and surviving on only a few hours of sleep. But Sam fights back. He throws a punch that connects with Lucifer’s jaw and sends him rolling away.

Sam is too exhausted to move. His arm aches and the blood has bloomed down his whole sleeve. Lucifer holds his jaw and stares at Sam with eyes that almost look afraid.

“I know you’ve been to Hell—“ Lucifer starts. 

“You put me there!” Sam explodes. His voice is poison. 

Lucifer’s expression changes to one of intense hurt. Manipulation, like always.

“I didn’t mean—“ he tries again. 

At that moment, a shining light appears in front of Sam and morphs onto Lucifer. Dean is still there on the ground, sitting up now, half obscured by the light emanating from Lucifer’s form. 

“You’re not—” Sam says to Dean. He shakes his head and shakily gets to his feet. “You’re not him.”

“Who, Sam?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You tried to run off into the middle of nowhere!” Dean stands and his voice seems to echo. Lucifer stands there, arms crossed, like a pissed off father trying to help chastise Sam. “I think it fucking matters!”

Sam starts walking — limping — back toward the car. Every step hurts his arm and knee and makes Lucifer disappear for a few seconds. Dean’s still there, next to Sam, saying something but Sam’s brain is fuzzy and the words sound underwater. 

They make it back to the car and Sam slumps heavily against the passenger door. He holds his weight, keeps himself up, and his mind starts to clear. 

“We’re going to get a room,” Sam can hear Dean saying now. Lucifer is behind him, mouthing the words in synch. “And you’re going to explain what’s going on.”

Sam is too drained to argue.

*

_“How do you know this is real, Sam?”_

_“How do you know you’re in a car, with your brother, crossing the U S of A?”_

_“How do you know you’re not playing with me in Hell?”_

_“How do you know it’s not me you dream about at night, in our bed—“_

*

The moment Dean unlocks the door to their room for the night, Sam makes a beeline to the bathroom and barricades it closed with his body.

“Sam?” Dean calls, timid, but he doesn’t try to barge in.

Lucifer is Sam’s constant companion. His devil on the shoulder. Whisperer of sweet nothings into Sam’s bleeding ears.

“So you never answered me,” Lucifer says. Sam can see him in the mirror across from them. So real, so tangible. “ _How do you know_?”

Sam lurches forward. One second by the door the next at the mirror. He slams down a fist on the toothpaste-spattered glass. 

It shatters immediately. Pieces fly to the linoleum floor and rain over Sam. Lucifer is a distortion; a Picasso painting that disappears the moments Sam picks up a piece of broken glass and slashes it across his arm. 

But he isn’t gone long. 

Sam punches the mirror again. Again. Shards explode over Sam’s skin and bring bubbles of red to the surface. 

Arms wrap around Sam’s own before he can throw another punch. He turns, ready to shove a piece of metal into Lucifer’s jugular, but it’s Dean and Sam _can’t be sure_. 

“Woah, Sam, hey!” Dean jumps back, hands up and palms forward. Surrender. Fear. 

Dean's eyes, until then trained on Sam’s face, look around and take in the room. They fly open wide when he looks down at Sam’s arms.

“Sam—“ he gasps. He reaches out, snatches his hand back like Sam is poison.

Blood continues to dribble from Sam’s wounds, coating first his skin then the floor. His body is on fire but Lucifer is gone, Lucifer is gone, _Lucifer is gone_.

It’s all that matters. Not the fear in Dean’s eyes or the pinpricks of pain dancing over Sam. 

“Sam,” Dean says again. More wariness now than shock. “Just—stay here okay? Hang on.”

Sam stays. Numbness is spreading over his body but Lucifer keeps away. Dean disappears behind Sam into the cabinet under the sink and rustles around. He re-emerges with a small handful of towels.

“Hold this,” Dean instructs, pressing one to Sam’s left arm. It turns red as soon as Sam applies pressure. “I’m going to grab the first aid kit. Stay. Here.”

As though no time passes at all, Dean is back and tugging Sam into the main room. He pushes him to sit on the foot of one of the beds and opens the backpack they’ve repurposed for first aid.

“I’ll fix you up,” Dean says, quieter now. “Then you have to tell me what happened.”

_What if I don’t know what happened?_

Dean kneels down beside him and opens a bottle of disinfectant. The heavy smell fills the room, turns it into an operating theatre, as Dean dabs some onto cotton then presses it against Sam’s wounds.

The numbness gives back to burning and Sam sucks in a breath.

“Sorry,” Dean murmurs as he keeps going. So many tiny cuts and nicks on every inch of bare skin. Even Sam’s shirt is shredded. “Let’s get this off.”

Mechanically, Sam lifts his arms and allows Dean to remove his shirt. His mind reels back to Hell, back to Lucifer’s fantasy world where this fake Dean would pull off Sam’s clothes before discarding his own—

“Sam.” 

Back to the present. Dean’s blood-stained thumb swipes under Sam’s eye and comes away damp. Sam didn’t realize he was crying.

“Please,” Dean says, now reaching for a roll of bandage and tearing a strip with his teeth. “Tell me what happened. Should I be looking for hex bags?”

Dean gently takes away the towel Sam is still holding — rust red all the way through now — and dabs disinfectant on the largest gash. Sam looks down with mild interest as Dean begins to wrap.

“I don't know,” Sam says finally. How long has he been silent? A minute? Ten? “I just— I had to.”

Dean continues wrapping without a flinch. He looks up at Sam. “Did you see something? Another Bloody Mary case?”

Sam shakes his head. _I saw something, but not like that._

“What then?” Dean asks. His voice has taken on an edge as he finishes up the bandaging but Sam’s body still burns. “Is it Hell? I know what that’s like but you can’t let it get to you, just push it out—“

A barking laugh rises in Sam’s throat and he spits it into the room. “That’s so easy for you to say. You came back and started drinking your weight in beer. And I remember your nightmares.”

Dean begins to pack up the backpack. He doesn’t meet Sam’s eye. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”

_And you didn’t have the devil on your shoulder. You didn’t have a perfect world morphed and crushed and absorbed._

“Should we go back to Bobby’s?” Dean says. “Rest up a bit? I want to help you. I know Bobby does, too.”

“People are still dying,” Sam says. Words he’s heard from Dean’s mouth and Dad’s before him. “We have to hunt. We have to save people.”

Dean finishes packing up and drops back on a crouch by Sam. He’s so close and Sam wants to reach out, to touch, but he can’t. The ache in his chest has been ripped open since Hell; the one he’d put in a locked box and shoved deep into his heart. He’s always wanted Dean, always loved him more than was decent, but he can’t. He never can.

“We have to save you too, Sam.”

*

Newspapers litter the tiny motel room table. Sam sits for hours at a time, digging through articles and circling potential hunts with a dying ballpoint. 

Lucifer is there most of the time, sitting across from Sam, reading his own articles. 

“Oh, look,” he says, holding the page up to Sam. Sam doesn’t look. “ _Siblings caught in incest affair_. Juicy. Seems right up your alley, doesn’t it?”

Sam pierces the newspaper with his pen as he circles a small article about a missing child. _Disappeared into thin air. Parents distraught._ The paper is a New England publication.

Perfect.

“Hey, Dean,” Sam calls. “Might’ve found us a case.”

Dean emerges from the bathroom, a towel wrapped low around his waist. Sam looks away and Lucifer winks. 

“You’ve said that a lot these last couple of days,” Dean says. “Not another missing kid case is it?”

Sam shoves the papers away in frustration. Lucifer tsks. 

“Well what do we do?” Sam says. “You’ve kept me holed up here for almost a fucking week with nothing to do.”

Dean pulls out the chair Lucifer’s sitting in and they seem to morph into one. Sam shivers; tries to hide it by rubbing his arms. The pain from his cuts tears through and Lucifer vanishes. 

“Sam,” Dean says, slowly putting the newspapers into precarious piles. “Do you really think you’re in the right head frame to hunt?”

“I think,” Sam says, snatching the papers back from Dean and stabbing one with his pen. “That kids are missing and people are _dying_. And we’re the ones who need to help them.”

“Why?”

“Yeah, Sam,” Lucifer says coming up behind him. “Why?”

“How can you say that?” Sam says. “You’re the one who says we’re hunters, the one who refused to ever give it up.”

Sam looks up at Dean and regrets it. The wide expanse of skin with water droplets still drying. He can’t have this. He can never have this. 

“Yeah, well.” Dean drags a hand over his face and looks ten years older in an instant. “Maybe I’m over all this destiny crap.”

“And soulmates,” Lucifer quips. He’s materialized next to Dean now and his features blur: some of Nick, some of Dean. “Pretty sure Dean always thought that was bullshit.”

At this point, Sam thinks anything connected to the angels was bullshit. Destiny doesn’t matter. It never did — but saving the world? Saving Dean?

Sam would do it all over again. 

“So altruistic, Sammy,” Lucifer says. “I for one am glad you said yes. We’ve had a lot of fun together, haven’t we?”

“Sam.” Dean’s waving a hand in Sam’s face. “You alright? When’s the last time you slept?”

“When was the last time you did?” Sam shoots back. 

He’d seen Dean’s eyes in the night, heard the fast breathing of alert lungs. They’d both lie in their separate beds and wait until enough sunlight came through to get up and pretend. 

Of course Sam has Lucifer beside him. Often he seems to content to just lie there, making Sam aware of his presence but sometimes he insists on reaching out, touching—

“And I know you like it,” Lucifer says. 

“Yeah, well,” Dean says again. His hand slumps back onto the table and he grows silent. Lucifer is humming something. Sam ignores it.

“Can you at least pick something for us to check out? If it’s a bust I’ll believe you and rest.” It’s a lie and Sam’s sure Dean knows it, but it’s all he has right now. He needs to get moving. They’re climbing the walls here.

“Breakfast first,” Dean says. He picks up about a dozen of the newspaper pages and waves them around. “Give me a chance to read over these.”

*

Dean agrees with the case about a missing kid in Maine and they set off. Dean driving, Sam shotgun, Lucifer in his favorite seat behind Sam. His arms rest loosely on either side of Sam’s head. When Dean’s not watching Sam from the tail of his eye, Sam can grip his still-bandaged arm and make Lucifer leave for a little while.

He’s sure Dean still knows.

*

Dark sky and broken stars. Dean’s fingers tapping the steering wheel along to softly playing Pearl Jam. Lucifer is gone — but for how long? Sam’s torn between wanting to sleep and wanting to savor this moment. 

Dean looks at him, smiles, and Sam’s heart cracks. 

*

If he pushes Dean away, it’s easier. Lucifer seems more inclined to stay away. It’s like Sam’s trying to shove a wall between them and it’s working.

They stop at a motel not far from where the kid — Elliott James Sam now knows — disappeared. Sam gathers up guns, his laptop, and goes inside before Dean’s even out of the car.

Sam checks his phone. 11:07. Still morning; they’re making good time. He knows Elliott’s mother gets off work at 2 and it will take her 15 minutes to get home. Lucifer is nowhere to be seen as Dean steps inside with his own bag. He looks at Sam and frowns but says nothing. Sam sits down at the knife and fork gouged table and boots up his laptop.

Ghosts and demons — the usual suspects —seem out. Vampires? Sam could call Bobby, ask about sightings, but no. He doesn’t want to involve anyone else. He can do this. The more focused he is the less Lucifer moves from his peripheral vision into view. Research. Hunt. Rinse. Repeat.

Sam doesn’t even notice when Dean sits across from him until he grabs the computer screen and spins it around.

“Hey,” Sam protests. 

Dean pushes his hand away and there’s a spark of bright light in Sam’s eye. _No_. 

“I’m gonna grab something to eat,” Sam says, snatching the car keys from where Dean left them by the door.

“Sam—“ Dean starts, but Sam is already gone.

*

Teeth bared, the vampire flies at Dean. Sam steps out the shadows, machete ready, and decapitates the creature. Its head rolls under a cage of body parts dripping with blood. An abandoned warehouse made the perfect nest. 

“Hey, hey.” He makes his way over to the boy whimpering in the corner. His hair is filthy but Sam can see the golden curls that he recognizes from the photo of Elliott James. “It’s okay.”

Sam knows it isn’t okay. Sam knows this kid will never be okay again. But it’s all he has to say as he scoops Elliott up and takes him from the freezing building. 

Dean calls the ambulance and they wait until they hear the sirens. Elliott clings to Sam but Sam has to let go. They have to keep moving. Dean’s forehead is bleeding into his eyes and Sam’s vision is taking on the burst of light again.

“You will be okay,” Sam tells the kid. Lies keep spewing from his mouth. “Tell the paramedics to call your mom. Everything will be okay.”

They get in the impala and Sam drives much to Dean’s complaining —

“It’s fine! Look, blood’s already clotting!” 

— and he zones in on the roads between them and the motel. Winding past buildings, and then houses, and then the several tourist spots that pop up. Dean is talking but Sam ignores him. He has to. It keeps the light from becoming human. 

Back in the room. Bag by the door. First aid kit at the foot of the bed. Keys in the dead centre of the round brown table. 

“Sit down,” he says to Dean. Dean obeys. 

The sun outside the window is setting, an orange flare filling the room and making the walls look almost as though they’re licking with fire. Sam shakes his head. _Focus_.

He tries so, so hard to be methodical about cleaning Dean’s wound. But Dean spends the entire time wincing and hissing out in pain which forces Sam to tune in, to make sure his brother is okay. 

The lapse in focus is enough for Lucifer to appear on the bed behind Dean. 

“I missed you, Sammy.”

“Almost done,” Sam murmurs to Dean. He presses butterfly strips to the deep scratch that probably needs stitches. Dean’s stopped complaining. He’s looking at Sam instead, reaches out, and rolls Sam’s sleeve up. The touch is like fire but a good kind — or at least it would be if Sam didn’t have to bite his lip and press down everything he wants in his heart.

“I’m fine,” Sam says before Dean can even ask. “They’re the old scratches.”

Dean gives him a look that Sam knows means _do you think I’m an idiot?_

“Then when’s the last time you showered?” Dean traces the outline and Sam no longer feels the scratch or the heat or the presence of Lucifer. He feels nothing but Dean’s fingertips on his skin. “Because this is dried blood.”

“Vamp must’ve made me knock it.”

“Mhmm.”

Sam moves away. He has to. And starts packing up the medical supplies. They need to hit a drug store and restock. He’s about to go out and do just that but Dean grabs him. Forces his gaze back. 

“Tell me about Hell,” Dean says. “Tell me about the cage.”

The sun is brighter. A burning red and orange with black smoke spewing from above. The room heats up, Sam feels the sweat drip from his forehead and pool under his arms. He needs to get out. He needs to get away. 

“Come back to me, Sam,” Lucifer says. He’s back on the bed — or did he never leave? “I’ll give you the world. I’ve already shown you everything you could ever want.”

“I can’t,” Sam says, his voice cracking. He doesn’t know if he’s talking to Dean or Lucifer. Or both. 

“Sam—“ Dean tries again. His voice is a chasm Sam can’t let himself fall down.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. He stands, stumbling over too tall legs and lunging for his duffel. “I can’t. Dean— I’m sorry.”

And Sam’s gone.

*

The sun has entirely vanished by the time Sam decides he’s wandered far enough through alleys and behind buildings for Dean not to find him. He stands by the side of the road, him and Lucifer illuminated by a flickering street light, and tosses his thumb toward the road. Traffic is sparse. 

“How far do you think you can run?” Lucifer asks. “I mean, I can just show you to the gates of Hell — there’s plenty around. Won’t even lock you in the cage, Sammy; we can rule over Hell. Well, _I_ will. You can be my...consort...if you will.”

Sam tries his hardest to ignore him, but the only other thoughts his mind can focus on enough are of Dean and he can’t. He doesn’t know when or how he’s going to get back to his brother...or even _if_. 

“It’s safer this way,” Lucifer says, tone more gentle, and that makes things worse. 

Lucifer reaches for Sam. A sensation of dry ice that reaches Sam’s skin before contact is even made. 

Instinctively, Sam raises a fist and punches out at Lucifer. He hits air and a car drives by, speeds up when it sees Sam. Lucifer is back. Laughter fills the air. 

“Is this _really_ better than Hell?”

Sam clenches his fists at his sides. “Anything is better than you.”

*

Lucifer fades in and out as Sam opens and closes his eyes; different forms, different modes of attack. He goes from syrup sweet to lethal in a mere blink. 

“Sam, Sam, Sammy,” he murmurs as he drags Sam against him. His voice is Dean’s. His hands are Dean’s. They hold Sam, back flush to chest, and rock him like Dean used to when they were kids. They tell him it’s okay, that Dad will be back soon, that Sam will feel better soon. He just ate too much. That’s why his tummy hurts. _It’s okay, Sam. Everything is okay._

Is Sam thinking the words or is Lucifer saying them?

Then: “Do you know how much I miss being in that cage with you? Sure, being truly trapped isn’t ideal. But I thought I could spend eternity with you. With my true vessel — my _soulmate_. It really was bliss, wasn’t it? Don’t worry. We’ll be back soon enough.”

“Just keep sleeping, love. We’re getting closer.”

“ _Hush little baby, don’t you cry…_ ”

*

When Sam’s fever breaks he has no idea where he is. 

He stumbles through an open door that happens to lead to a bathroom and throws up green and black bile. Lucifer pats his hair and Sam is too weak to shove him away. His stomach lurches again. His brain spins. What is happening?

“It’s time to go back, Sam,” Lucifer says. “That’s all. Your soul never really escaped. You know that, right? Fate, destiny — whatever you want to call it — needs you to be down below. With me.”

Sam moans and uses what strength he has left to drag his bitten and broken fingernails over his skin. Angry red lines dart up but Lucifer stays. Not even a flicker.

“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” Lucifer says. 

“Fuck off,” Sam says. Useless, petty words. The effort of saying them causes Sam to lean over the toilet and vomit again. His stomach and throat burn but still Lucifer stays. 

“It’s getting closer, Sam.” Lucifer rips Sam’s head up by the hair. Dean’s eyes bore into him. “It’s time to come home.”

*

Phone.

The shrill sound of Sam’s generic ringtone drags him back to consciousness on the cold bathroom floor. It smells acidic, mildew-y. Enough to make Sam want to retch again. Instead he propels himself from the room and to the bedside table where his cell continues to scream and vibrate.

“Dean?” His head is swimming and he half-sits half-falls onto the unmade bed. Lucifer-as-Dean is on the other side of the double, leaning back against the headboard. He raises his eyebrows. Sam ignores him. He isn’t real. The one on the other side of the phone _is_. He has to be. Sam’s sweat-slick fingers slide across the phone screen to answer. 

“Sammy?” Dean sounds far away, like a pool of water is separating his voice from the phone. “Sammy where _are_ you?”

His voice cracks, shatters in the second sentence. The dam breaks and water spills over until Dean is hardly even there. 

“Come back,” Dean’s saying. “Please, Sam.”

“What did I tell you, Sam?” It’s Lucifer now. Crawling across the bed until his face is right beside Sam’s. “It’s time to come back.”

Sam digs nails into his skin. It still does nothing.

“Besides,” Lucifer says. “How do you even know that’s Dean. I can be much more than one—

_One_

_One_

_One._ ”

His words echo on as, before Sam’s eyes, a multitude of Deans materialize. Some in identical clothing, some in items taken from Dean’s bagged wardrobe. Deans that look like he did in high school, like when he showed up in Sam’s living room at Stanford, what he looked like the last time Sam saw him. There are Deans with blood dripping down his face, ones with deep lacerations criss crossing his body, others with scars Sam has never seen before.

One with both scars and fresh wounds steps forward. Tears track down his face, washing the blood muddy. “Remember when you let me go to Hell?”

Another. Flayed skin falling from his naked, rakish body. “We did this for you, Sam.”

More. More. Worse looking each time, more blood than man. “You _made_ us do this.”

“Sam.” The phone. Sam’s still holding it against his ear. “Come back.”

A less injured Dean steps forward. Is this one Lucifer? “Come back.” He reaches out and grasps Sam’s hand. Squeezes it so hard the bones grind. Sam welcomes it. He holds on.

“Dean,” he says. “Please.”

This Dean leans forward and takes Sam’s mouth and Sam _knows_ it’s wrong. 

“Stop!” He yells. The word vibrates through his chest and explodes through both his mouth and hand — the cell phone he’s holding crunches in his grip. The line goes dead. Sam drops it with a dull thud onto the carpet.

The Dean’s don’t leave but none are his.

*

They won’t leave. Hundreds. _Thousands_ . They fill the motel room and leave no space to breathe. Lucifer is always there, always whispering, always telling Sam to _please, please, come back_. 

*

A second wind. 

Sam’s eyes pop open and he knows what to do. A tiny, perhaps rational part of his brain says this plan is stupid. Pointless. That it won’t work and even if it _does_ , God or Lucifer or whoever will find a way to reverse it.

But he has to try. He can’t do this anymore.

All it takes is a few phone calls on a cheap burner he picks up at a gas station two towns over. His new rental car is packed full of Deans and Sam has to squeeze his muscles and skin and guts all in to fit. 

Somewhere along the way the Deans disappear and it’s Sam and a single Lucifer. 

Alone. 

“You sure about this, Sam?” Lucifer asks. He’s in the passenger seat flickering between the forms of Nick and Dean. “Pretty drastic choice. You do know you’ll end up back with me no matter what. I could make it a lot less painful.”

Maybe Sam’s still sick and delusional, but he swears there’s the littlest hint of fear clouding Lucifer’s ever changing eyes.

_This will work._

Sam doesn’t care if Lucifer can hear his thoughts. 

_Holy oil traps you. It will banish you._

Lucifer says nothing. Sam drives on. 

*

Pain is already coursing through Sam. 

It started slowly as a tingling in his fingertips against the slick black steering wheel. Sam turns the radio up to drown out Lucifer and the sensation.

Then it spreads and starts afresh in his legs. Rising up, up, until Lucifer raises his eyebrows. 

“Happy to see me, Sammy?”

This definitely isn’t a burn of pleasure. It clenches his chest and Sam’s sure this is what a heart attack would feel like. 

But it doesn’t matter. Not now. 

He reaches his destination as the pain reaches his face and head. Worse than the most painful migraine he’s ever experienced. Sam’s vision is blurred and he has to rely on the ever-steady glow of Lucifer to guide him into the abandoned warehouse.

“See? We help each other out, bud.”

A djinn once lived here, but now it was empty of human and supernatural entities alike. 

Apart from Sam and Lucifer of course.

The holy oil is heavy, solid in Sam’s hand. An ornate design is etched into the golden jug and, if Lucifer were really and truly here, Sam knows he couldn’t touch it. 

All the same Lucifer appears to be keeping his distance.

“You can’t follow me,” Sam says. His voice is so far gone. “You can’t compete against this.”

“Do it,” is all Lucifer says. He’s a glowing version of Dean right now and repeats the two words as an endless echo. “Do it. Do it. _Do it_.”

Sam draws a thin circle on the dusty cement floor and steps inside. The air smells like a mixture of a Denny’s deep fryer and earthy muck. It was never the smell Sam expected it to be. 

But when he starts pouring it over his arms, his legs, his head, the smell becomes something else. 

“Ambrosia,” Lucifer says. “Nectar of the Gods. Keep going. You look good all oiled up like that.”

The oil drips through Sam’s hair and over his face. Some settles on his lips and he draws the droplets into his mouth on reflex. It burns like fire and he gags.

Lucifer chuckles. “You’re a true vessel — makes sense this would affect you.”

Sam wishes none of this had ever happened. He wishes Lucifer, Michael, _God_ were figments of legend like hunters used to believe. He wants to salt and burn a ghost, stab a zombie, track down things that go bump in the night and waste them into oblivion. 

He wants to be with his brother. 

The oil is cooling on Sam’s skin. Turning to an icy burn instead. The zippo lighter is heavy in his pocket. A gift from Dean to replace the gift from Dean to replace the gift from Dad. 

Even at Stanford it was one of the few hunting world relics Sam kept.

Sam closes his eyes. Lucifer manages to glow through his eyelids, his retinas; an imprint on his mind. 

But Dean is also there. The _real_ Dean. Childhood, learning to hunt and drive and shave his fucking face. Leaving for Stanford. Dean standing in his living room and Sam knowing he was going to say _yes. Yes, I will go with you. Wherever you want to go._

“Yes is always your word, isn’t it?” Lucifer says. 

“Never again,” Sam whispers.

Sam reaches into his pocket and touches smooth metal. 

He’s about to flick the lid,to watch the flames dance, when a door slams. 

Sam’s eyes fly open. He’s sure it’s a mirage. Dean — truly Dean because Lucifer is also there as true-form and Sam just _knows_ — coming through the door. He looks like death. Eyes deeply recessed in blackness and his body swaying like he’s drunk. But when Dean catches Sam’s eyes he stops dead then sprints toward Sam with a cry of his name.

“Hurry up, Sam!” Lucifer screams. It’s the most unhinged Sam has ever seen him. 

Like slow motion, Dean reaches Sam before he can even move his thumb to flick on the flame. He grabs Sam’s arm, hard enough to make Lucifer flicker for the first time in days. His eyes are wild, bloodshot. 

“What are you doing?!”

Sam’s chest heaves. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” Sam says. He tries to snatch his hand back but Dean’s grip is firm. Not that it matters; Sam isn’t going to light himself on fire if Dean could fall into the heat. “He never leaves.”

“Who?” Dean says, but Sam’s pretty sure Dean’s already figured out the answer. 

“Lucifer,” Sam says. He wants to spit on the name. “He won’t leave me alone. He wants me to come back—“

“I know,” Dean says and Sam thinks, maybe, he does. “I know, Sammy. But please. _Please_. We can figure it out. Just come with me. We’ll wash you off and decide our next move.”

Dean sounds so calm but his body is thrumming. Sam can feel it transferred to him. The heat that was rising through Sam has been replaced. Now he only feels sick. At least Lucifer is nowhere to be seen. 

“Go,” Sam says. His voice cracks, shatters onto the cement floor and blends with the holy oil. _Let it take all of me away._

“You know I can’t do that.” 

Dean’s free hand comes up and cups Sam’s face. It’s so cool, so comforting. 

Sam can’t help himself. He drops the lighter with a clatter and takes hold of Dean’s face. Dean doesn’t move. Their lips crash together and when Dean doesn’t pull back Sam does wonder if this is another illusion. One stronger and more real than the rest. 

_I don’t care_ , Sam thinks. _I don’t care anymore_. 

It’s Sam who eventually pulls away when Lucifer’s slow-clapping becomes deafening. 

“Well done, Sam,” Lucifer says. “Making hallucinations on your own now?”

He knows Lucifer made Dean. He knows Lucifer _is_ Dean, but Sam needs this. 

“Let me take you home,” Dean murmurs against Sam’s lips. 

Sam is ready to embrace the cage again with open arms. 

*

Sam is in a daze as Dean drives. The oil has dried slick over his body but the burning doesn’t come back. There is no Lucifer. There is no pain. Sam doesn’t care if he’s in a world of pretend. 

Driving seems to last both hours and minutes until Dean pulls up on the side of the road. A lone street light illuminates the desolate scenery on either side of them. The engine cuts. 

“I don’t—“ Dean begins to say, but Sam can’t have this conversation. Not yet. He can’t even trust himself to speak. 

So he cuts the distance between them and draws Dean in for another bruising kiss. His hand tugging Dean’s collar and forcing them together. It wasn’t just a fluke in the warehouse; Dean responds with as much enthusiasm as before but Sam can still feel the exhaustion. It matches what Sam himself feels deep in his bones. 

“Back seat,” Dean says when they have to break apart for air. Sam follows. 

They don’t fit properly. Of course. A car was never made for two grown men, but this is _their_ car, and it feels right. The smell of leather and scratches from years of knives. If this is Lucifer, if this is his illusion, he’s doing a damn perfect job. 

Dean initiates the kiss this time and Sam takes. Greedy. He can feel the slickness of holy oil coating both his clothes and Dean’s. Surely Lucifer couldn’t be this close to it? Or is it only with it being on fire? Sam is too tired, too distracted, too far gone to remember. 

“Take this off,” Dean says. His hands drag under Sam’s shirt and start tugging. Sam obliges and helps Dean out of his own. 

An image of the house, the dream — _Hell_ — strikes Sam but this is different. It’s not an imprinted memory like Lucifer forced into his brain. No. This is a fleeting moment and Sam can push it away. 

_The first time_ , he thinks. _This is the first time_. 

The first time with Dean’s shirtless body pressed against him; the first time he sees lust clouding his brother’s eyes that’s directed at him. Sam kisses him. Holds them together until the position pains his shoulders and chafs his cock in his pants. Dean is unbuckling his jeans, grinding his ass onto Sam’s cock and yes. This is Dean. _This. Is. Dean_. 

It’s skin on skin once Dean manages to shove both their pants down around their ankles. Sam’s mind reels with everything that’s happened these past few weeks. His skin is still sore, stinging when Dean applies pressure to the large gash un-healed on his arm. 

“Sorry,” Dean says. He drops his mouth and comes back up with a sheen of blood coating them. Sam wipes it away. 

If their places were reversed, if it were Dean who became infected with demon blood, started drinking it, freed Lucifer, let the devil himself take control of his soul—

“Whatever you’re thinking about,” Dean says, gentle. “Stop it. Put it away. I’m here and you’re here. That’s all that matters.”

Sam kisses his brother slow and long. Feeling the heat of his cock against Sam’s leg and trying hard to convince himself this has to be real. 

There's miraculous lube that Dean must have had on hand — and how long has Dean been wanting this? Preparing for this? Or did Lucifer manifest it from thin air?

Who cares. 

“Do you want to be inside me?” Dean asks, soft, a vague waver in his voice. 

_Different again_. Sam can’t imagine Lucifer would let Sam be the one to fuck him. Too much loss of power. He nods.

Sam watches either his brother or the form of his brother take tacky, lube-coated fingers and press them into himself. Sam wants to help. Wants to do it. But the exhaustion and awkward angle holds him down. He lets himself watch and enjoy, knowing it will soon be him. Inside. 

Dean’s eyes are half-hooded and beautiful. His cock is leaking against Sam’s belly and the heat from his core fills the car. Sam runs his hands over every inch of Dean’s skin he can reach and draws him into a kiss that tastes of blood and sin.

“I want to be in you,” he says. “Now.”

Sam replaces Dean’s fingers with his own cock. The true first time. 

Dean is so perfectly tight. His mouth is thrown open and his hands clench onto Sam’s broad shoulders. Held together, skin on skin and inside skin. They’re one and this feels so right.

 _If this is Lucifer_ , a little voice in the back of Sam’s mind grinds out, _let him keep pretending. Let it be this_. 

Above him, Dean’s eyes don’t leave Sam’s face. He still looks so, so tired but he uses Sam’s shoulder under his hand for leverage and keeps taking them closer to the edge. 

The leather of the car sticks to Sam’s ass and holds them in place. The window crank digs into his back and he’s waiting for Dean to slam his head on the roof. 

“Sammy,” he says in a voice that is so much Dean’s. 

Dean’s fingertips cling as he comes to a stop on Sam. He cries out, cock pulsating and takes Sam over the edge with him. 

Their heaving breaths fill the car as Dean pulls out and they both come down. Outside, the world is quiet. Sam waits for the fire and brimstone but none appears. Dean is a heavy pressure on Sam’s chest and Sam holds onto the sensation. He doesn’t expect it to last long. 

But Dean very slowly extracts himself after a few minutes, swearing as he shuffles around and finds his jeans. 

“Mind if I wear your shirt?” he says, then tugs it on before Sam can answer.

Sam grabs his own clothes and they move to the front seat. The air is cool. 

“Let’s go get a room.” Dean squeezes Sam’s fingers and starts the engine. 

*

Sam wakes. 

The world isn’t burning but his body is — though this time it’s not entirely unpleasant. His chest is covered by Dean’s with sticky sweat, cum, and oil from last night. They’re in a motel room but didn’t make it into a shower. 

Sam shifts his weight and Dean groans. He lifts his head, rubs his eyes, and cracks a smile. 

“Morning,” he says, voice sleep thick and hair beautifully tousled. Sam reaches out, touches, and is rewarded with an even bigger grin. “Sleep like shit?”

“Far from it.”

It was a sleep without dreams, without pain. Even his numb leg and probably bruised elbow don’t truly _hurt_ ; they remind him of last night. Reality or illusion don’t matter anymore. If this is Lucifer tracing soft patterns on his skin so be it. Sam is embracing the blurred lines. 

But still, his muscles remain tensed as he waits for Dean to turn into Nick or a blinding light. To start the torture before going back to sweet as pie. 

“I’m sorry,” Dean says, so quiet Sam doesn’t quite catch it at first. “I shouldn’tve taken advantage of you—“

Sam shuts him up by grabbing Dean’s hand and bringing the fingertips to his lips. Fingers that touched Sam all over last night, last year, last decade. Fingers Lucifer can recreate in a perfect mirror image. 

“I don’t care anymore,” Sam says. He laces their fingers together and clings. “Just let me stay here. Like this.”

Dean’s eyebrows knit together. “I’ve never asked you to leave.”

“I don’t care,” Sam says again. “Promise you’ll keep pretending and I’ll do anything.”

He will. As long as it’s Dean’s face and body Sam is content to be Lucifer’s so-called consort. 

“Sam,” Dean says. He unlinks their hands and takes Sam’s face instead. His eyes are soft but serious. “Where do you think we are?”

“Hell,” Sam says like it’s the simplest answer in the world. 

Dean’s grip tightens. “No. I got you out. Do you— I’m not Lucifer, Sam. It’s _me_.”

Sam shakes his head and takes Dean’s hands along with it. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It _does_ matter.” Now Dean’s eyes are hard, pleasing. Clouded in a sheen of tears. “I. Got. You. Out.”

He punctuates each word with a squeeze of Sam’s face. Noticeable, but not painful; not like the digging he could imagine Lucifer doing with his nails.

“You can’t,” Sam says. “I’m in the cage. Nobody gets out. That was my sacrifice and I would do it a thousand times over to save Dean.”

 _Fuck the world_. Lucifer knows his thoughts anyway. He knows Sam jumped in to save his brother. 

“I know,” Dean says. “I know you saved me — and I saved you. You really think I sold my soul just to let you punch out a few years later?”

“Stop reminding me,” Sam says. He closes his eyes. “Keep pretending, okay?”

Dean squeezes again. Still not painful. “ _Sam_. Stop it.”

Sam opens his eyes. It’s still Dean sitting there. Sitting up enough the sheet has fallen to reveal the rest of his naked body. The one Sam wants to spend eternity touching, kissing, holding. He runs his hand down the length of Dean’s side. Dean’s own hands release their hold on Sam’s face to rest between them on the bed.

“You say nobody ever gets out of the cage, but you’re living proof. It happens. It took a fuckload of research since I didn’t have my nerd boy to help, but I figured it out.”

Sam waits. 

“Hell wants souls—“

Ice courses through Sam’s veins. “You didn’t—“

“No,” Dean says. “No, not all of it. They took half and they _kept_ half. Of yours. And I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you back whole, I’m sorry for all of _this_.”

He takes hold of Sam’s arm and rubs his thumb over the cuts and burns etched into the skin. “And I’m sorry I somehow brought _him_ with us.”

Dean says the word with a fury and acid Sam feels whenever Lucifer appears. But if this _is_ Dean, then where is Lucifer?

“How do I know?” Sam whispers. 

Dean travels lower, circling the marks on Sam’s wrists and then his chest. Sam doesn’t remember half of them. 

“Being away hurt me, too,” Dean says. “We need each other to be whole.” He pauses for a moment, kisses the spot of skin over Sam’s heart. “No different than before, huh?”

“Did you really save me?” Sam asks. He swallows away the lump in his throat but it still trickles out with his words. 

“I did, Sammy,” he says. “I promise you. This is real — _I_ am real — and we’re gonna figure out a way to keep Lucifer away, okay?”

Sam stares into his brother’s green and brown speckled eyes. The ones that saw the horrors of Hell long before Sam ventured through the door. _“I had to look out for you. That’s my job.”_

“I was willing to stay down there,” Sam says. He doesn’t care that his voice sounds all choked up now. “I wanted you to go to Lisa. I wanted you to have a life after everything you’ve done for me and Dad.”

Dean lets out a crack of a laugh. “Do you really think I could ever do that? I sold my soul already. I never needed it all.” He pauses then grins. “And do you _really_ think after last night God would let us both keep them intact?”

Sam gives a broke laugh despite himself and draws Dean in for a kiss. In the corner of his eye he thinks there could be a flash of light or a sliver of a familiar malignant face, but he’s here with Dean. On Earth. _Saved_. 

And that’s enough for now. 

**END**


End file.
